These Students Are Sending A Powerful Message to the Oscars

It may be 2015, but women’s representation in the entertainment industry is still grim. According to the Women’s Media Center, a recent San Diego State University report, for instance, found that women accounted for only 16 percent of directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors for the top 250 domestically made films in 2013. This number is depressingly low on its own and, unfortunately, is even a decline of 2% from the previous year.

Such statistics demonstrate why events like the Athena Film Festival, which addresses the lack of representation of women filmmakers by devoting an entire weekend to honoring their work, are so important. Melissa Silverstein, co-founder of the festival as well as founder of the blog Women and Hollywood, works tirelessly to raise awareness …

Saturday Vids: Support Obvious Child

Gillian Robespierre, Writer/Director: “I first made the ‘Obvious Child’ short film in the Winter of 2009 with my friends Anna Bean and Karen Maine. We were frustrated by the limited representations of young women’s experience with pregnancy, let alone growing up. We were waiting to see a more honest film, or at least, a story that was closer to many of the stories we knew. We weren’t sure how long that wait was going to be, so we decided to tell the story ourselves. The short starred Jenny Slate and had a pretty nice festival run. When we shared it on the Internet it was really exciting to see that people were actually watching it. But what was even cooler were the conversations the movie ignited. That truly encouraged …